One of the purported benefits of a college education is the development of a person’s ability to think critically – to be able to reason, to investigate and to approach information with skepticism.

But are college students being taught critical thinking? If they are, are they aware of it? And do they – and their professors – even know what it is?

These and other questions spurred a group of Cornell researchers to not only talk about critical thinking, but to do something about it. The result: an online module, running just over an hour in length, that can be offered as a way to instill critical-thinking concepts early in a student’s academic journey.

The online short course provides common language and a foundation for instructors to explicitly connect critical-thinking skills and dispositions to their course content.

“One of the very important things that is reinforced throughout the module is that this is not an innate skill. You are not born to be a critical thinker,” said Christina Schmidt, director of the Office of Curriculum Development and Instructional Support, Office of Academic Programs, in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences (CALS).

“Critical thinking is something that develops with practice,” Schmidt said, “and the more you can identify it, and the more you can intentionally practice doing it, the better you'll get at it.”

Schmidt is corresponding author of “From Implicit to Explicit: Overcoming Common Barriers to Teaching Critical Thinking Through an Innovative Online Module,” published Feb. 9 in Frontiers in Education. A companion piece, “Perceptions, Pedagogies, and Challenges in Critical Thinking Education. A Faculty Perspective,” based on a universitywide survey that spawned the online short course, was published Feb. 15 in the same journal.

Co-authors are Mark Sarvary, senior lecturer in neurobiology and behavior, Stephen H. Weiss Provost’s Teaching Fellow and director of the Investigative Biology Teaching Laboratories (CALS); Justin St. Juliana, senior lecturer in ecology and evolutionary biology (College of Arts and Sciences, CALS); and Chelsea Specht, the Barbara McClintock Professor of Plant Biology and associate director for faculty development and engagement in the School of Integrative Plant Science (CALS).

One of the challenges in teaching critical thinking is simply defining it. “You could ask 100 people and get 100 different one-sentence answers,” Schmidt said.

The researchers didn’t attempt to establish a succinct definition, but instead identified 13 skills involved in critical thinking, including: accessing relevant information or data; evaluating different points of view; considering information that opposes a line of reasoning; and accepting ambiguity or uncertainty.

They also listed six dispositions, or qualities, that critical thinkers possess, including: being willing to acknowledge and correct flaws in their own reasoning; being aware of knowledge or information that they are lacking, and being comfortable with saying “I don’t know”; and being curious and eager to fill in gaps in their own knowledge.

These skills and dispositions can be developed over the course of a four-year college education, but if they’re not taught intentionally, they can be hard to identify.

“There’s this sense that a student will go through a class and just subconsciously collect all this information about how to think critically,” Schmidt said. “And it’s entirely possible that in some cases they are, but even if they are, they don’t know that they are.”

The researchers piloted the asynchronous, 75-minute module in six introductory-level courses at Cornell in 2022 and ’23. Sarvary taught one of the courses, Investigative Biology (BIOG 1500), and has used the discipline-independent module, with course-specific modifications, ever since. He said it can be easily integrated into any course as an assignment. 

The module includes: initial reflection, where students write about their experience with and understanding of critical thinking; an introductory video, in which the 13 skills and six dispositions of critical thinkers are explained; and an interactive video featuring situations within a hypothetical research scenario, with embedded multiple-choice quiz questions to identify each of the 13 critical-thinking skills being used.

A questionnaire given before and again after the module highlighted its effectiveness. Prior to completing it, students with little or no experience with critical thinking had little confidence in their abilities in seven areas, including describing critical thinking and its importance to learning and academic success. After completion, students’ confidence rose measurably.

Schmidt said the way students described critical thinking changed, as well.

“At the beginning, they used a lot of innate, cognitive words, like ‘brain,’ ‘intelligence,’ ‘thinking,’” she said. “But afterward, my favorite one is that ‘curiosity’ became one of the top 10 words – almost a quarter of the students put that up there. That was a very exciting shift in understanding.”

Both Schmidt and Sarvary said the need for developing students’ critical-thinking abilities, and awareness, is great.

“Some of our undergraduate teaching assistants say that this question comes up during interviews for internships and for jobs – ‘When did you last apply critical thinking skills?’” Sarvary said. “And students are having a hard time answering that because – according to our faculty survey – most instructors don’t teach these skills explicitly. Our new online short course is the answer to that problem.”

Schmidt said many classes are still using the module, noting that around 7,000 students have completed it over the last three-plus years. Interested faculty can learn more about integrating it into their courses on the Investigative Biology website.

Support for development of the module came from the Center for Teaching Innovation, through an Innovative Teaching and Learning Award won by Schmidt, Specht and Sarvary.